Today, there are numerous situations in which confirming the type of vehicle passing over a spot on the road is important. While visual inspections can provide a good deal of information, they do not readily report the magnetic signature of a vehicle, which can reveal additional details about the vehicle contents. Methods are needed for determining that magnetic signature in a cost effective and reliable manner.
The situation has some significant hurdles. Running wires to sensors embedded in roadways turns out to be difficult, expensive, and often unreliable in the rugged environment of a roadway with multiple ton vehicles rolling over everything on a frequent basis. What is needed is a way to use a wireless vehicular sensor node to report something approximating the raw vehicular sensor waveform via wireless communications.